The Harvard Classics Volume 38 eBook

Thence we went and burned several villages; and the
barns were all full of grain, to my very great regret.
We came as far as Tournahan, where there was a large
tower, whither the enemy withdrew, but we found the
place empty: our men sacked it, and blew up the
tower with a mine of gunpowder, which turned it upside
down. After that, the camp was dispersed, and
I returned to Paris. And the day after Chateau
le Comte was taken, M. de Vendosme sent a gentleman
under orders to the King, to report to him all that
had happened, and among other things he told the King
I had done very good work dressing the wounded, and
had showed him eighteen bullets that I had taken out
of their bodies, and there were many more that I had
not been able to find or take out; and he spoke more
good of me than there was by half. Then the King
said he would take me into his service, and commanded
M. de Goguier, his first physician, to write me down
in the King’s service as one of his surgeons-in-ordinary,
and I was to meet him at Rheims within ten or twelve
days: which I did. And the King did me the
honour to command me to live near him, and he would
be a good friend to me. Then I thanked him most
humbly for the honour he was pleased to do me, in
appointing me to serve him.

THE JOURNEY TO METZ. 1552

The Emperor having besieged Metz with more than an
hundred and twenty thousand men, and in the hardest
time of winter,—­it is still fresh in the
minds of all—­and there were five or six
thousand men in the town, and among them seven princes;
mm. le Duc de Guise, the King’s Lieutenant,
d’Enghien, de Conde, de la Montpensier, de la
Roche-sur-Yon, de Nemours, and many other gentlemen,
with a number of veteran captains and officers:
who often sallied out against the enemy (as I shall
tell hereafter), not without heavy loss on both sides.
Our wounded died almost all, and it was thought the
drugs wherewith they were dressed had been poisoned.
Wherefore M. de Guise, and mm. the princes, went
so far as to beg the King that if it were possible
I should be sent to them with a supply of drugs, and
they believed their drugs were poisoned, seeing that
few of their wounded escaped. My belief is that
there was no poison; but the severe cutlass and arquebus
wounds, and the extreme cold, were the cause why so
many died. The King wrote to M. the Marshal de
Saint Andre, who was his Lieutenant at Verdun, to
find means to get me into Metz, whatever way was possible.
Mm. the Marshal de Saint Andre, and the Marshal
de Vielleville, won over an Italian captain, who promised
to get me into the place, which he did (and for this
he had fifteen hundred crowns). The King having
heard the promise that the Italian captain had made,
sent for me, and commanded me to take of his apothecary,
named Daigne, so many and such drugs as I should think
necessary for the wounded within the town; which I
did, as much as a post-horse could carry. The
King gave me messages to M. de Guise, and to the princes
and the captains that were in Metz.